How to Start Writing Your Story
Writing doesn't have to be scary. Here are five methods to make it easier to start writing your game's story.
How To Write a Game is a free publication written by Ryan Matejka, an organic human who loves to write. If you like this, please consider making a small donation.
The writing process is intimidating. Whether just starting to write down story ideas or drafting the first scene, the act of beginning can seem as daunting as climbing through a thorny thicket to even the most experienced writers. True, the blank page is full of limitless potential and wonder, but it is also full of limitless choices, obstacles, and tireless work. What if you can’t figure it out? What if you make the wrong choices? What if you scrape through all the thorns only to emerge bloodied and with nothing to show for it?
While there’s no way to get completely around the thorny thicket, there are different ways to approach writing that can make starting the process much less prickly.
Five Methods to Start Writing Your Game’s Story
Below are five of the most effective writing tips to start writing your story and develop your writing skills. What works best for you will depend on factors such as your personality, interests, and lifestyle, as where you are in the process. You might find one method useful to start before moving on to another method, or you might use them all interchangeably. There are no rules — do whatever feels right and makes the process easier and more fun!
Method 1: Take Notes
One of my favorite methods to grease the wheels of creative writing is to take notes on whatever story stuff I’m thinking of. It might start with a scene idea, a character, a theme, a setting, or a goal — instead of keeping the idea trapped in my head where it gets lost in the millions of other thoughts I have throughout the day, I simply make a note of it somewhere.
This not only prevents the idea from getting lost forever in my fallible mind, but it also forces me to focus completely on the idea at that moment, which often spurs more ideas. Before I know it, I’ve got a dozen other story ideas popping into my head to take note of and the story development is officially underway!
Method 2: Define Your Interests
If you feel like you cannot take notes because no inspiration for the story has struck yet, try instead to define your interests. Make a list of your favorite stories, games, real life events, and anything else that interests you. Try to identify what they have in common and think about how you can create a story around that overlap, or take two vastly different inspirations and brainstorm how you could combine them. Whenever you need inspiration, look at this list.
This method is great because it essentially breaks down the creative process into something more tangible, making it ideal for anyone with beginner writing skills or who is struggling to know where to start.
Method 3: Set Writing Goals
Whether you’re prone to being organized or your life resembles a room full of cats, setting goals can help make the huge task of writing a story seem much less intimidating. Start with a big goal, such as “first draft finished in 6 months,” and then break it down into smaller goals. Make the goals as minuscule as you find helpful, even if it’s as small as “spend 15 minutes brainstorming today” because those 15 minutes could be a huge contribution to the story in the long run.
This method is great because creativity often needs boundaries in order to thrive, and it’s very easy to procrastinate writing. To maximize your goal-setting, consider the SMART criteria and make your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Develop a writing routine that’s hard to break.
Method 4: Outline
Another personal favorite method for making writing seem less challenging is to outline. My version of outlining involves putting all of my notes into one location and organizing them by type, such as characters, scenes, and inspirations, and then plotting the whole story and determining how to tell each scene. In doing this, I’m able to see the story from a macro perspective and get a better idea of what is missing, what might be in the wrong place, and how it all flows together.
Whereas taking notes is fairly two-dimensional (literally writing notes on a two-dimensional page), outlining can become much more three-dimensional, requiring organized rows of notes, each with further notes nested underneath. To help outline, consider using a free web-based organizational tool (I have used both Milanote and Trello, and Scrivener is full of great tools for writers to use offline) that allows you to create a board with easily movable cards, or get an actual bulletin board and a stack of different colored notecards to play with.
Method 5: Just Write
This one may seem obvious, but one of the most effective methods to make writing less intimidating and improve your writing skills is to just throw yourself into the deep end. Grab a piece of paper and pen, open a word processor, or dust off an antique typewriter (the medium you use can actually influence your writing, so try different options!) and, as I explained in my 3 Essential Tips to Improve Your Writing, write what’s on your mind without worrying about how terrible it sounds — that’s what rewriting and editing is for!
Remember that nobody is going to see what you're writing until you show it to them, so there’s nothing to be worried about. You can even write a practice or warm-up scene using a writing prompt just to get a feel for the process. Ignore the entire story and just start with a single sentence. Any writing is going to be more productive than none at all.
So how do you prefer to find your way through the thicket? Leave a comment to share your thoughts!